Waterfront News

Platinum selling artists Goo Goo Dolls and Daughtry have revealed dates for their upcoming Summer 2014 co-headlining North America tour. Plain White T's will be the opening act for this trek.

The tour kicks off on June 12th at the Toyota Oakdale Theatre in Wallingford, CT, and it will make two stops in New Jersey: Holmdel's PNC Banks Art Center on Tuesday, August 12th and Camden's Susquehanna Bank Center on Sunday, August 17th. Inner Mission fanclub and VIP presale start on Monday, March 17th, and tickets for the general public go on sale Saturday, March 22nd. More dates will be announced soon.

Goo Goo Dolls have been a mainstay on the adult/modern rock charts since their 1990 album Hold Me Up. The Grammy nominated band released their 10th studio album entitled Magnetic last June. Daughtry exploded on the scene with their 2006 platinum song "It's Not Over". Fronted by former American Idol contestant Chris Daughtry, the band released their latest album Baptized in November.

Plain White T's have been releasing music since 2000, but didn't get their big break until 2006's multi-platinum track "Hey There, Delilah" from their Gold record Every Second Counts. The band is set to drop their seventh album American Nights this week.

"Public intimacy" is social media's contribution to our oxymoronic life, but guitarists have grappled with the concept since the first one faced an audience. The instrument draws the heart into the fingertips, which bare the greatest intimacy in a whisper of sound. Place the guitar in front of an orchestra of 60, and logic - and intimacy - may vanish completely.

Amplification has balanced those forces, particularly in recordings, and the guitar has gathered a bundle of concertos that revel in the sonorities of plucked strings, exuberant brass, and richly carpeted strings. Symphony in C discussed all that Saturday when guest conductor Philip Mann led the first local performance of John Corigliano's Troubadours for guitar and orchestra at Rutgers-Camden.

The concert featured Jason Vieaux in the elaborated set of variations on 12th-century songs, which dealt theatrically with sound and delicacy. The composer was portraying a musical era and the troubadour himself as he exposed his heart in ballads of love and sometimes bravery. Offstage percussionists and winds offered conflict and precise noise against the singing guitar.

The work began with a whispered slow violin tone. The composer created hangings of tiny sound and difficult balances to introduce the guitar's search for expressiveness within the bounds of intimacy. As the piece evolved, Vieaux's virtuosity emerged in rapidly articulated passages and resonant quick chords. A cadenza, pairing quiet with fleet searches over the range of the instrument, echoed the antique musical source with chromatic theatricality. Mann led the ensemble in precise collaboration, shifting meters and dynamics to color and comment on the guitar's often dreamy message. Both Vieaux and the ensemble made thorny writing appear to be easily managed and maintained the feeling that the heart fit easily in the fingertips.

Mann, now music director of the Arkansas Symphony, challenged a long tradition when he followed with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. Listeners were reminded that it is impossible to re-create performances like those common in the 1960s, the '80s, and even later. This young orchestra has a different metabolism and an impatience with sentimentality. Tchaikovsky's Fifth was often labeled "lugubrious" 50 years after its composition, but Mann found a new understanding of this piece. Its intricate inner workings emerged clearly, the often-obscured instrumental balances underlined in ways that gave the piece new expressivity.

Speed is not the mark of the new objectivism; instead, a clear-eyed perception of relationships and pairings gives direction and force to re-creating what many would call a warhorse. Mann demanded precision and opened the orchestral textures to make welcome soloists of the bassoon, flute, and horns and to show the composer's deft use of violas and cellos in coloring the music's outlook. The concert could count as an evening of new music.

Germany's version of "Good Morning America," has a date at the Camden Children's Garden tomorrow morning.

RTL Television, a primary station in Germany, will tape a segment for its top-rated morning show from the butterfly house at the waterfront attraction Wednesday morning.

Garden spokesman Andrew Adams, said the station approached them, interested in using the butterfly house for a segment on “International Day of Happiness.” The TV show will have reporters all over the world, he said, with the one North America crew in Camden.

The garden, which opens for the season March 30, had some butterflies shipped in for the occasion.

The morning show, Punkt, which means "top of the hour" in German, follows a similar format to Good Morning America and with about 3.5 million viewers is the number one rated morning show in Germany and Europe, according to the producer, who contacted the garden.

Punkt reporter, Christina Endruschat, will discuss a Native American butterfly legend which says if you have a secret wish, whisper it to a butterfly, then release it and your wish will be granted.